Levitating plastic beads mimic the physics of spinning asteroids
Some asteroids can barely hold it together. Rather than solid lumps of rock, ‘rubble pile’ asteroids are loose collections of material, which can split...
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
NASA’s exoplanet count surges past 5,000
It’s official: The number of planets known beyond our solar system has just passed 5,000. The exoplanet census surpassed this milestone with a recent...
How gene therapy overcame high-profile failures
Gene therapy pioneer Richard Jude Samulski remembers when he avoided the words “gene therapy.” In the mid-2000s, he told people he worked on “biological...
How the way we’re taught to round numbers in school falls short
Imagine needing to estimate the total cost of the items in your grocery basket to decide whether to put something back. So you round...
The universe’s background starlight is twice as bright as expected
Even when you remove the bright stars, the glowing dust and other nearby points of light from the inky, dark sky, a background glow...
How climbers help scientists vibe with Utah’s famous red rock formations
As Kathryn Vollinger prepared to climb Castleton Tower, a 120-meter-tall sandstone formation in the desert near Moab, Utah, the outdoor guide assessed her gear....
Diamonds may stud Mercury’s crust
A treasure trove of diamonds may be sown into Mercury’s cratered crust. Billions of years of meteorite impacts may have flash-baked much of Mercury’s...
What do we mean by ‘COVID-19 changes your brain’?
Like all writers, I spend large chunks of my time looking for words. When it comes to the ultracomplicated and mysterious brain, I need...
What made the last century’s great innovations possible?
In the early decades of the 20th century, a slew of technologies began altering daily life with seemingly unprecedented speed and breadth. Suddenly, consumers...
Smoke from Australia’s intense fires in 2019 and 2020 damaged the ozone layer
Towers of smoke that rose high into the stratosphere during Australia’s “black summer” fires in 2019 and 2020 destroyed some of Earth’s protective ozone...
Rotting food waste emits 5 times more greenhouse gases than planes 
‘He felt heard’: How a film brought a UN report to life in Xochimilco 
Beyond the Moon: Space Week around the world 
Climate Change Is Becoming a Pregnancy Hazard Worldwide, Survey Finds